Abshier, Alford and Mary A. McDowell

Lea County Families and Histories, "Then and Now", Vol II, 1984

     In 1911, perhaps in anticipation of statehood for the territory of New Mexico, several families came together in a wagon train from Lynn County, Texas to settle in what was to become Lea County. Two of the families were related, Mary Ann and Alford W. Abshier (65 and 67 years old) and their daughter and her husband, Ellen and John Jackson. Each couple filed on 320 acres the Texas line, north and east of Knowles in what was then Eddy County. Five months later a second Abshier daughter and husband, Martha and Henry Lee Brewer, came also taking 320 acre claim. Then in January 1913, the Brewer's oldest daughter, Mary Ethel, arrived with husband, Marion Cecil Sweatt, and a young son, Cecil Jr., and filed on a homestead a few miles northwest in what was Chaves County. Other relatives also came to eastern New Mexico during early years of statehood. In 1915 Alford W. Abshier died and was buried in the Knowles cemetery; in a few years, his widow, Mary Ann, returned to Lynn County along with the H. L. Brewers.

     Mary Ann McDowell was the second daughter of Ellen (Brownfield) and Dave McDowell, born in St. Francois County, Missouri, February 7, 1846. Her parents came from Tennessee but her father had been born in Madison County, Missouri. Two other daughters were: Lizzie (married Gaines Ballard, two sons; John and Jeff), and Eliza "Aunt Yi" (married Englishman Will Kennedy, two sons: Willie, who died in infancy and Gus). A third daughter, Cassie, died at age eight; a son, Sam, married Angeline Williams and he had five children: Bert, Clarence, Maud, Nettie and Harry.

     In 1862 at age 15, May Ann McDowell married Alford Washington Abshier in Flat River, Missouri. Alford was born December 12, 1844, in Independence County, Kansas, to John Abshier and wife, a French woman Jane (surname unknown). While Alford was fighting in the Civil War (first for the Confederacy, then for the Union) their first child David, was born January 4, 1864 in Missouri, and died October 22, 1864 in Illinois. Six other children were born in Missouri: Sarah Frances (October 22, 1864), Hulda Florence (October 10, 1868), twins Martha Angeline and Mary Eveline (December 14, 1871), Eleanor Jane ( March 23, 1875), and James Steven (May 22, 1878).

     In 1879 the family moved to Texas where the children grew up and married. Frances to Virgil Dudley from Indian Territory (one child Alma Dudley Dean) and second husband, Ephram Furgerson (two sons: Dave Francis and Audrey Alfred). Florence married Jim Brown of Oklahoma (Ben Brown survived, three died as children) and second husband R. L. Taylor (children: Annie Taylor Foster; Buster Lee Taylor; Minnie Taylor Bingham Newton). Ellen married Albert Freeman and later John W. Jackson {story elsewhere in this book} and Steve married Ava Ann Curry in Mansfield, Texas in 1901 (six children: Willis died as a small child, Nellie at fifteen, and Belton Novis, J. S. and Alfred Abshier, all residents of Lea County).